from the not-how-it's-supposed-to-work dept

When they write the future tome discussing how to run a video game company in such a way as to piss off as many customers as humanly possible, it seems quite likely that it will be titled The Electronic Arts Guide To Business. Between doing the old customer demand flip-flop when it came to SimCity, attempts to lock their games down from the modding community, and their practice of shutting down games in which real customers have spent real money, the company at times appears to be some kind of macabre performance art piece on how to be as anti-customer as possible. Word of mouth has supplied a reputation for EA that is less than desirable, leading some to wonder how they might be able to turn their PR ship around.

Dungeon Keeper sure has a high rating on the Google Play Store for a game loathed by many. Its 4.5 star average of over 84K user reviews suggests that people are really liking EA's microtransaction-heavy affair. Only there's one thing this rating system isn't telling you: customers are only given the option to rate the game if they say they'll give it five stars.

See, on Android you're given the option to rate the Dungeon Keeper after a certain period of play. Only instead of tapping the appropriate number of stars you think it deserves, you're asked if you think it should receive "1-4 stars" or "5 stars". As reported by PocketGamer, selecting the latter option takes you to the game's Google Play Store where you can rate it, while the former option simply takes you to a new "feedback" prompt asking "What would it take to make Dungeon Keeper a 5-star game?" Your options: "email us" or "not now."

Ah, it's so simple! If you want to make sure your games are highly rated, attempt to convince customers that they can only rate the game with a perfect rating! More beautifully, while you can still rate the game whatever you like after promising a 5 star review, this method allows for the wonderful practice of forcing your customers to lie in order to do so. It's like an evil multiplication machine!

Oh, and that ability to lie and review at less than five stars? That's what makes this sneaky attempt to garner favorable reviews a-okay, according to EA.

“We're always looking at new ways to gather player feedback so that we can continue to improve our games. The 'rate this app' feature in the Google Play version of Dungeon Keeper was designed to help us collect valuable feedback from players who don't feel the game is worth a top rating. We wanted to make it easier for more players to send us feedback directly from the game if they weren't having the best experience. Players can always continue to leave any rating they want on the Google Play Store.”

Right, except you aren't being upfront about that with your customers, whose feedback you so greatly desire. Unless that feedback is a low rating in the marketplace, in which case your customers can either figure out they have that option on their own, or they can suck it. Meanwhile, of course word about this devious attempt will make the rounds, cementing most folks' opinion of EA as being as consumer un-friendly as possible.

from the bring-it-back! dept

Peter Eckersley, over at EFF, has a disappointing blog post, noting that Google apparently released and then very quickly removed a really good privacy feature in Android. Basically, it would let users have much more granular control over what kind of data an app could access. Right now, when you install an app on Android, the system will tell you what kind of data it wants to access, and then you have to agree across the board, or not install the program. The new feature effectively gave users something of a line-item veto, blocking specific types of data access, while allowing others to go forward, so that people would still use the apps, but block certain attempts to access certain kinds of data they didn't want that app to see.

Thus, it's really unfortunate that Google so quickly removed such a great feature. Google claims the feature was "released by accident." You could see how some app developers might be upset about such a feature, but hopefully not the good ones. If anything, this will drive app developers to be much more protective and careful both in how they design their apps and in how they explain the need for data access to users. As Eckersley notes, the right thing for Google to do here is to re-enable this feature. The fact that it released it, shows that they've actually been working on it and have the code. Hopefully, the true story for why it was removed was merely that the code wasn't quite ready, and that the code will be returned in the near future. In the meantime, however, those who jailbreak or root their device can get the same functionality -- but hopefully it will become standard on Android before too long.

from the and-on-and-on-it-goes dept

Back in May 2012, Judge William Alsup (yes, he's popular today) issued a very good and very thorough ruling explaining why APIs could not be covered by copyright. Alsup, who claimed he learned to program in Java to better understand the technical details of the case, went into a fair bit of detail in his ruling, which looked like it was clearly designed to explain basic programming concepts to an appeals court who would surely be hearing the case -- and almost certainly with judges who had less (if any) programming knowledge. The appeal was officially heard by the Federal Circuit appeals court (CAFC) today and there are some reports suggesting that the judges are skeptical of Alsup's ruling and may be leaning towards overturning it. Reading through some of the details it appears that at least one judge is clearly on Oracle's side in believing that APIs can be covered by copyright, while it's not as clear where the other two judges on the panel sit.

Given CAFC's history as exceptionally supportive of locking up knowledge and information on the patent side, it wouldn't be terribly surprising if they did so as well on the copyright side (side note: while, normally, copyright cases should travel up the local appeals court route, since this case started as a patent case, even though it ended up as a copyright case, apparently the appeal still goes to CAFC, the court that hears all patent appeals). This is yet another issue with having a court like CAFC, which has long appeared to be captured by those who support a maximalist view of intellectual property.

Still, oral hearings in appeals are not always indicative of how judges are leaning. Reading the tea leaves there is often quite dangerous. The hearing sometimes focus on tangents, or involve judges really trying to test out a particular theory, and final rulings may be more strongly based on the written filings (and, sometimes, briefs from amici -- of which there were quite a few in this case). This case still has a long way to go, but hopefully the appeals court recognizes the careful level of detail that judge Alsup went into in determining that APIs do not deserve copyright protection.

from the but-of-course dept

About a year and a half ago, we wrote about "Rockstar Consortium," a shell company set up by Apple and Microsoft (and a few other companies), in which they placed many of the patents they received when they outbid Google to get Nortel's patents. We noted at the time that one of the reasons regulators let Apple, Microsoft, RIM and others team up to buy these patents without it being an antitrust concern was that they promised that all the patents would be able to be licensed on "reasonable terms." Except... once they handed them off to Rockstar, that company's CEO, John Veschi, noted that this promise "does not apply to us."

So, in a move that surprises basically no one, Rockstar Consortium has sued Google along with most of the major Android phone makers (Asustek, HTC, Huawei, LG Electronics, Pantech, Samsung, and ZTE) claiming they violate a bunch of those old Nortel patents. This is yet another example of the obnoxious practice of privateering patents, where operating companies shuffle patents off to troll shell companies, to avoid having countersuits launched against their own products. It's pretty obvious that the lawsuits, two of which are listed below, are nothing more than Microsoft and Apple trying to put a dent in Android.

This has nothing to do with patents as innovation, and everything to do with patents trying to stifle competition. Again.

In case you can't read that, it involves Schiller complaining to Jobs and other top Apple execs about a Kindle TV ad that shows someone buying an ebook via an iPhone and having it appear on an Android phone as well. He then notes:

While the primary message is that there are Kindle apps on lots of mobile devices, the secondary message that can't be missed is that it is easy to switch from iPhone to Android.

Not fun to watch

Less than an hour later, Jobs replies with a suggestion:

The first step might be to say that they must use our payment system for everything, including books (triggered by the newspapers and magazines). If they want to compare us to Android, let's force them to use our far superior payment system. Thoughts?

That's pretty damning, as it shows the decision had little to do with reasonable choices for consumers, and a lot to do with punishing a competitor.

from the real-time-market-research dept

It's no secret that Mark Shuttleworth, the CEO of Canonical, maker of Ubuntu Linux, has very strongly embraced the mobile ecosystem as the future. Back in May, he famously "closed" bug 1 listed for Ubuntu, which was "Microsoft has a majority market," declaring that this was no longer true, thanks to iOS and Android (mainly Android).

Android may not be my or your first choice of Linux, but it is without doubt an open source platform that offers both practical and economic benefits to users and industry. So we have both competition, and good representation for open source, in personal computing.

Even though we have only played a small part in that shift, I think it's important for us to recognize that the shift has taken place. So from Ubuntu's perspective, this bug is now closed.

Now they're taking it up a notch with an incredibly ambitious crowdfunding campaign on IndieGogo, trying to raised $32 million in one month, for an exclusive new hardware device, the Ubuntu Edge, which will only be available to backers of the project (if it gets funded). The video Shuttleworth put together is worth watching:

Basically, they're trying to build the ultimate smartphone, and they appear to have rethought a few key design elements, including using sapphire crystal for the screen, rather than easily cracked glass. The software will work with Android, so you wouldn't have to totally do without Android, or its vast developer community. It's definitely an interesting campaign. The idea isn't to be "in the smartphone business," but rather to set a new high bar that will push others (and, of course, to encourage more people to use Ubuntu, both for mobile and desktop). As Shuttleworth notes, they're not going to be selling any more of these outside of the IndieGoGo campaign, though they may do similar crowdfunding campaigns in the future with the goal of continuing to drive the market forward. It's a fascinating strategy: if the rest of the world isn't innovating fast enough, lead the way yourself with the express intent that others will follow and help make your software more valuable in the process.

One other interesting tidbit: they set up the campaign so that if people bid on the first day, they can get the phone for $600, or $230 less than it is throughout the rest of the campaign. The campaign shot through half a million very quickly and is still going up from there, but I wonder if it will slow down a bit after the first day and the price goes up.

If this project reaches $32 million, it will more than triple the most successful crowdfunding project to date, the Pebble smartwatch, which raised over $10 million. But, this is exactly the kind of project that crowdfunding was made for -- because it really is investing in a somewhat risky project, while also acting as a form of market research. People who are buying into this are buying into the vision -- which is definitely a risk. The phone hasn't been built yet. All the imagery are renderings, rather than prototypes. And, you never know how the execution will turn out. Personally, I'd rather see and feel a phone before I shell out $600 or $800 for the device, but for people will to support the basic idea of advancing mobile computing, it appears that many see it as a worthwhile contribution towards that goal, whether or not the device itself turns out to be worth it.

It's quite impressive to see how quickly they've brought in so much money -- and it will really say something about the hunger for moving the space forward if they can get to $32 million. Of course, even if it doesn't reach the $32 million goal, the project is clearly successful on multiple levels. As we've noted in the past, crowdfunding projects that don't reach their goals are not "failures." They're smart market research at work. If there isn't a big enough market for these phones, Canonical just saved itself a ton of money by not going ahead with the actual production. And, at the same time, they still get a ton of free publicity for the mobile software... So whether or not this project hits its goal, it's crowdfunding done right.

from the get-over-yourselves dept

FairSearch, the increasingly silly and shrill looking "coalition" of tech companies which have nothing in common other than a visceral hatred for Google (it's led by Microsoft) has so far failed miserably in convincing regulators that Google was an antitrust problem. Now it's filed a new attack on Google in the EU, arguing that its Android mobile strategy is anti-competitive because it gives Android away for free.

“Google is using its Android mobile operating system as a ‘Trojan Horse’ to deceive partners, monopolize the mobile marketplace, and control consumer data,” said Thomas Vinje, Brussels-based counsel to the FairSearch coalition. “We are asking the Commission to move quickly and decisively to protect competition and innovation in this critical market. Failure to act will only embolden Google to repeat its desktop abuses of dominance as consumers increasingly turn to a mobile platform dominated by Google’s Android operating system.”

[....] Google achieved its dominance in the smartphone operating system market by giving Android to device-makers for ‘free.’

What's especially ridiculous here is that Microsoft, who is the major source behind FairSearch, dealt with this exact issue itself back during its antitrust fights, when people ridiculously accused it of the same thing for daring to give out Internet Explorer for "free." The idea that giving away some software for free is somehow anti-competitive is just laughable. That this is now being pushed by a bunch of companies who themselves use the exact same benefits of giving away free software to promote other parts of their business is just the height of cynical exploitation of the political process to try to hamstring a competitor in red tape, rather than competing in the marketplace.

Law Professor James Grimmelman, who is hardly a big Google supporter (he was among those who fought the hardest against the Google Books settlement) properly called this new filing by FairSearch "disgusting." It's a blatantly cynical attempt by Microsoft, Nokia, Expedia, TripAdvisor and Oracle to use a totally bogus legal complaint to just waste a competitor's time. All of those companies rely on free software in some form or another. No one in their right mind argues that offering free software is somehow anti-competitive. It seems that FairSearch has now reached hysterical desperation as it attempts to justify itself.

from the one-would-help dept

While the Apple patent disputes with Samsung and Motorola seem to get most of the publicity, Apple's first patent lawsuit against an Android phonemaker was against HTC, who quickly sued back. However, over the weekend, the two companies announced a settlement in which they're cross-licensing all of their patents to each other for a period of ten years. While the full details are secret, all of the indications are that HTC is paying Apple, but not a huge amount. HTC has said that it won't have "an adverse material impact" on its financials. While HTC remains a smaller player than Samsung, one hopes that this is actually a sign that Tim Cook has realized that Steve Jobs' infatuation with killing Android in court is not a productive strategy. This, of course, won't end many of the other patent fights around smartphones, but hopefully it shows that Apple has become less ridiculously "religious" about fighting in court, rather than focusing on the marketplace.

Of course, we've talked about Chinese manufacturers creating rather interesting mashups of phone ideas by ignoring patent, trademark and copyright laws (sometimes all at once!). And the decision to file for a design patent is made that much more amusing when you consider how design patents were at the center of some of Apple's big case against Samsung (for the non-patent nerds out there, design patents are a bit different than what most people traditionally think of as patents, and some actually suggest that they're really closer to trademarks than "patents" in that they really just cover a basic design look and feel, rather than a method or process).

That said, the details of this "Chinese patent" are a bit sketchy. Was it just applied for? Or granted? No one seems to be saying. It could just be a joke. That said, we've been noting for quite some time that while the US has been pushing China to respect patents a lot more (due to lobbying pressure from US companies), China has been mocking them all by suddenly "enforcing" patents much more stringently... but almost alwaysagainst foreign companies and to benefit Chinese competitors. So, it's not completely crazy to suggest that a Chinese company might be able to secure such a patent and use it to stop Apple, though it would take a fair amount of chutzpah (or whatever the Chinese equivalent is) to make such a claim.

from the open-source? dept

So the folks over at "Be the Robot" decided to make a cute little robot that could be controlled via your mobile phone. Not surprisingly, they decided to launch the thing on Kickstarter. You might notice that the robot has some resemblance to the Android robot... but it's not quite the same.

Why? Well, originally it was going to be designed as the Android robot... but then at the last minute, they realized that might be a legal issue. Even though Google encourages the use of the robot, it wasn't clear if this was allowed. So the team delayed launching the Kickstarter campaign to go visit Google and to seek permission... where hilarity (and no actual answer) ensued:

Just after we had uploaded the complete project on Kickstarter and about to press the “Submit to the world button” …we started to second guess ourselves and wanted to know are we really allowed to do this?

After further investigations, as well as talking to a few lawyer friends, we discovered that the Google Bug Droid in 2D form and in printed materials is in fact Open Source, so anyone can stick it on posters and make cut outs. But there seemed to be a gray area regarding the issue of whether a 3D version is in fact allowed for resale. So instead of killing the project or possibly getting into legal issues, we thought it would be a good idea to meet with some higher-ups at the Google Android headquarters and hear what they had to say.

To make a long story short, at this meeting (during which we felt like we were on a reality TV show) the concept was well received, but there was not definitive answer as to “Yay” or “Nay”.

Not wanting to kill the project after having already put so much work into it, and to make sure we could launch without any issues; we redesigned the outside shell to have a different appearance, while maintaining the same internal integrity and design we developed in the BERO secret lair.

So, it's sorta a little like the Android bot, but not quite, because no one could tell them definitively one way or the other if doing what they wanted to do was allowed. Isn't permission culture just great?